Heart Talk: Home that was meant to be ....

In Australia, the process of renting a house is slightly different. You only get to view a house along with other potential tenants in a time frame given by the agent or owner. If you like it, you lodge an application with the required documents. Having a prior renting history, a stable job, a few references in Australia really help. When you are new here, most of the times you do not have the first two things and it gets difficult to get your first rented house. This is what I have heard, though my experience was different. 

With this in my mind, when I started looking for a house I knew that I do not have a lot of options and that I need to make a decision pretty quick. I had seen a few houses and liked none of them. The streets were too quiet, too dark for my liking. Some were far from the city. Some too small. Some too big.

…. and then we found this one. When the unit was opened for viewing, it was still occupied by a couple. The agent looked at me and got a little confused because she thought I was the girl who lived here. When I entered the house it was all set up with furniture from IKEA Adelaide. Before I moved to Adelaide, I had made a list of things I wanted to buy from IKEA to furnish my new place and had set aside the money for it. The couple living here had set it up in the way I had pictured. The same dining table that I decided to buy was there. The fridge was full of magnets the way my fridge always is and there I saw this girl’s photograph who looked a lot like me and thus the agent’s confusion. Knowing me, I might have choked back my tears at this point but, I don’t remember that. I remember the warm feeling on that cold June evening. This was home....my home. Wooden floors, a small kitchen, a small balcony, on the main road with a street light just outside and photography studios and a printing lab at a walking distance… this was … as if it was meant to be. 

That night I wrote an emotional email to the agent saying that I wanted to rent this place because it was exactly like the one I had in mind and I was willing to give any guarantee that she may need. I was told by people that I was being a bit pushy, too eager, and that the unit was too small, too expensive for the size, was on the main road and thus traffic and noise, had an open car park, it was not guest friendly but, I put a filter on all such noises and let my heart lead. 

My application was approved and in all the days where Adelaide felt alien in the initial days of the move - this little unit felt HOME in every sense of the word.